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DAY 6
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I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
“So let us ask Our
Lady - for She understood His Thirst best of all –
to teach us to understand the gift of God to our Society [Family],
to satiate the Thirst of Jesus hungering for love, thirsting for love….”
(MT)
THEME: Our young MC Family gathers around Our Lady in prayer
GRACE:
To better understand and respond to the words “I
Thirst”
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Heavenly Father, I am Yours.”
From now on, you will be their Mother.
MEDITATION
1
As the young
Church gathered around Our Lady in the Cenacle to receive the outpouring of
the "Holy Spirit of the promise"; so our young Family gathers around Our
Lady in prayer to receive the promised outpouring of the life-giving waters
of Jesus’ Spirit – the Holy Spirit of God’s Thirst.
She is the Mother to
whom Jesus entrusts the Society (and entire Family) as we stand with her
next to the Cross of His Passion in the poor. It is she who opens our hearts
to understand and respond to the words He speaks to us there: "I Thirst."
And it is she who urges and leads us in witnessing to His Thirst before the
world.
Our Lady is
intimately connected to the entire process of our discovering, satiating and
proclaiming the Thirst of Jesus.
DAY 7
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: Our Lady would be
the one to nurture the Thirst of her Son
in each disciple who welcomed her
into his home.
GRACE: To welcome Jesus’ cry of Thirst in my
heart.
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come Heavenly Father, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION
2
The
mystery of Our Lady’s role in the revelation of God's Thirst began already
at her Conception, continued throughout her life on this earth, and carries
on even to this day in heaven.
In her Immaculate
Conception, she became the perfect mirror and vessel of the Trinity's
Thirst.
In her Annunciation,
and for the nine months she carried the Eternal Word within her, she came to
experience, as no other human creature, the depth of God's Thirst to be with
us. In giving Jesus birth, she brought God’s Thirst into the world.
On Calvary, she was
the first member of the Church to hear and open her soul to His cry of
Thirst. It was His Thirst (manifested in His passion and pierced Heart)
that became the "sword that pierced her soul" (as Paul reminds us, any word
of God is "alive and active, and sharper than a two‑edged sword" - how much
more these greatest of words: "I
THIRST").
It was there, on
Calvary, that she became the "Woman" of Genesis, the new Eve, "Mother of all
the living" ("Disciple, behold your Mother").
She would be the one
to nurture the Thirst of Her Son in Saint John and each disciple who
welcomed her into his home. She would be there to protect, purify and
sustain this Thirst.
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: The New Eve was to bring humanity to
accept Jesus´ Thirst
GRACE: To accept Jesus’ Thirst in my heart.
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Heavenly Father, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION
3
Note the important
connection Jesus himself has made between the gift of Our Lady as Mother,
and the gift of His Thirst: He proclaims the Trinity's Thirst for mankind
ONLY AFTER providing us with the "Woman" who would care for and nourish that
Thirst within us.
She would protect it
by "crushing the head of the Serpent" (who had first tempted humanity to
reject the Thirst of God and turn its human thirst inward on itself,
resulting in sin and death).
The first Eve
brought humanity to reject God's Thirst; the New Eve was to bring humanity
to accept it. And so, John tells us, immediately after giving us the gift
of His Mother (Jn
19:27),
He gives us the revelation of His Thirst (Jn.
19:28).
The two gifts are forever connected and interdependent:
“What God has joined
together let no man put asunder”.
The early Church
understood this connection from the start; for the first disciples returned
to the Cenacle after the Ascension and gathered around Our Lady in prayer.
As it was she on Calvary who has prepared the Church (represented by St.
John) for the revelation of God's Thirst, so it would be she on Pentecost to
prepare the disciples (both then and now) for the communication of God's
Thirst in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Love.
REVISION:
Write
down for 10 minutes (or more) the insights received.
PRAYERS:
THE ROSARY (at least one decade) with the
LORETO
LITANY
and MOTHER TERESA'S PRAYER
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: It was an experience of how much God
thirsted to love us
GRACE: That
Jesus’ Thirst be a fire within me as it was for Our Lady.
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Heavenly Father, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION 4
To Our Lady has been
entrusted this entire work of preparing the New Israel for the "new wine" of
God's Thirst: "New
wine in new wine skins."
Wine in the Old
Testament was often a symbol of the gift of God's self‑revelation; wine in
the New Testament becomes symbolic of the fullness of revelation. It is
especially a symbol of the blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit ‑ for the new
wine of God's Thirst is revealed in the Blood of the Passion and
communicated in the Holy Spirit.
Our Lady, in her
role of preparing this revelation, is present at both Calvary and Pentecost,
and has gathered the disciples around her.
It should be safe to
say that: if Mother, who is only a disciple, had her great experience of
God's Thirst on the train to Darjeeling (an experience which constituted a
kind of "Annunciation" for her and her future mission), then all the more
surely Our Lady must have had her great and overwhelming experience of God's
Thirst at her Annunciation. More than just an announcement, it was the
experience of how much God thirsted to love us, and be with us, to receive
our love. And if Mother's experience was so great as to become a fire
within her ‑ how much more so was Our Lady's experience a full gift of that
fire which Jesus had come (into her womb) to bring to the earth.
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: Our Lady pleading with the Father to share
with the whole world the living thirst within her.
GRACE: Zeal to proclaim Your Thirst to the whole
world.
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Heavenly Father, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION 5
That
fire was His Spirit of Thirsting Love that was to fill her:
"the
Holy Spirit shall overshadow you
. . ."
As that experience
urged Mother to satiate Jesus' Thirst and make it known, how much more so
for Our Lady ("The
love of Christ urges us
. . .” These words find a particular fullness in Our Lady).
Must not her
constant prayer have been, from that Annunciation day forward, a pleading
with the Father to share with the whole world the Living Thirst within her?
After His birth, what a longing and sense of responsibility she must have
felt ‑ to care in every way for Him who was the living channel of the
Father's immeasurable Love. Can we not imagine, in their thirty years of
intimacy and sharing, that Jesus would surely have opened His heart to her
and spoken clearly and ardently of the Father's THIRST which He had come to
reveal to the world? As He finally began His public ministry, how she must
have waited for the moment when He would proclaim the Thirst of Yahweh
before all of Israel.
Already at Cana, as
He made His first public appearance with His disciples, she would beg for
this "new wine" of joyful revelation. She and Jesus both understood the
significance and the symbolism of Cana, and only in the light of the
fullness of her request can we understand Jesus' negative answer, and solve
the apparent contradiction between His answer and the working of His first
miracle (cf. Rom.21).
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: Calvary, the real wedding of God and
humanity.
GRACE: To experience God’s thirsting love for me
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Lord Jesus, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION
6
Let us be assured
that indeed Our Lady was asking Jesus to reveal Himself fully. She knew the
biblical imagery of the wedding between God and Israel, and this wedding at
Cana must have seemed the perfect setting to reveal the depth and reality of
the love contained in that image, fulfilled in Her Son and His Infinite
Thirst.
She wanted Him to do
there what the prophets had always done in major moments of revelation ‑ to
speak God’s word and at the same time to act it out in symbol (symbolically
changing the water of the Old Covenant's revelation, to the wine of the
gospel revelation ‑ God is Love, a Thirsting Love).
Jesus understands
this immediately (it is easy to imagine how often she must have spoken to
Him of her desire that He reveal to the whole world what she had known of
Him in her womb). He responds that His "hour" has not yet come (not meaning
the hour for miracles. - In John's gospel, Jesus' "hour" always refers to
His crucifixion).
She could not know
that the Father had reserved the full revelation of His glory to another
"wedding feast" ‑ that of Calvary, the real wedding of God and humanity, the
real revelation and satiation of both God’s Thirst and man’s - of which Cana
was but the symbol and foreshadowing.
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: At
Our Lady’s pleading, Jesus worked His first miracle
GRACE:
Absolute trust in Our Lady’s mission for me
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Lord Jesus, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION 7
And so, at her
pleading, yet fully in keeping with the Father's plan, Jesus worked His
first miracle, by giving the symbol ‑ the "sign" ‑ of that which would be
His last word of revelation - the real "new wine" to be given in His words
from the cross.
This full revelation
of His Thirst could only be contained in the full expression of His love on
Calvary. As the steward prophetically spoke, He would yet save the "best
wine for last."
This was the hour
not of fulfillment, but of foreshadowings; and so Jesus gladly gave answer
to part of her request by giving the sign of water changed to wine for the
wedding.
The rest of her
prayer He would answer when this same wedding scene would be re‑enacted on
Calvary (with all the same elements: Jesus “revealing His glory”, the
presence of the "Mother of Jesus" along with a few disciples, the real
"wedding" between God and man).
>
I
Thirst
OUR
LADY AND THE MC FAMILY
THEME: Our Lady brought the “disciple” to
encounter and experience the Thirst of Jesus
GRACE: To be lead docilely to this encounter with
Jesus’ Thirst
PREPARATORY PRAYER: “Come
Lord Jesus, I am Yours.”
MEDITATION 8
Let us move on to
Calvary then, to the "hour" of fulfillment. Our Lady was there ahead of the
disciples, as at Cana. According to the contemplative tradition of the
Church, she had followed closely along the Way of the Cross in sorrow and
prayer.
At Cana she had
shown herself to be "intercessor", would she not now plead for the
Apostles? Were none of them to "witness His glory,” a glory infinitely
beyond what they had seen in symbol at Cana?
Finally, touched by
grace, John (who had run away just like the others, who had fled from God's
Thirst in Gethsemane as Adam and Eve in another garden), recognizing his
weakness, made his way through the jeering crowd along the Via Dolorosa.
At a certain point
he found Mary; in her, he found a love, a strength, a serenity that perhaps
surpassed and sustained his own, a heart to open his own to the words he
alone among the twelve would hear.
Our Lady, having
entered the home of John, brought him the "disciple" to encounter and
experience the Thirst of Jesus, as she does for every disciple.
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